


The Thorn in Your Side

by returntosaturn



Series: Back on the Map [1]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Brotherly Bonding, F/M, Family Angst, Fist Fight, young Newt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 12:14:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10831062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/returntosaturn/pseuds/returntosaturn
Summary: He waits outside, scuffs his boot along the cobbled walkway, even until Theseus sticks his blonde head from around the heavy, arched door of the sanctuary, tuts, and gives a jerk of his chin.His father glares, tips of his ears red as Newt has never seen when he sits beside them at the first pew, the pipe organ already grating sardonic and slow under the stone walls.She does not come.// part of the Back on the Map series, a bit of Newt's backstory, following the events after the death of his mother





	The Thorn in Your Side

“When is she getting here?”

Newt flicks his eyes from his own reflection in the mirror, fidgeting at his bowtie. “I don’t know.”

“Well, she’s got half an hour.”

Theseus’ tone sharpens, and he tosses his phone to the counter with a clatter.

“She’s my friend, why should you be worried about it?” Newt cuts, giving up on getting the bow tie straight at all and turning, facing his elder brother full on.

The men and their father have been marshalled to the bridal suite to dress for the morning in pressed suits, fresh from the tailor, to the nines and matching smartly. An effigy of the remains of their family, Newt thinks bitterly. To the idea that their family might’ve had the chance at being a happy one. A whole one. A disguise to the fact that three of them have not lived harmoniously in all of his eighteen years. It is impossible to believe that they will begin to do so now, even with the yoke of a heritage that is now theirs to bear.

“She _said_ , she’d come, didn’t she?”

“Lay off!” he all but snarls, jerking his suit jacket closed. They have floated around each other all morning, pushed between wet, desperate glances and charged conversation, and the only thing worse than being confronted with his own unpolished emotion is being subject to the tension other people bring, and the degree at which his own brother exudes it. Too familiar, too close.

The lead-hinged door of the aged church squeals, and the eldest Scamander, shoulders like fractured girders, sways into the room, shoes shining like fresh tar.

Setting the man with an even, unaffected stare is the easiest it has ever been, as his eyes rake over Newt’s creased collar and flat lapels. He reaches, giving the lopsided bow tie a tug, which Newt allows without protest until a lurid grin twitches over the man’s face. “You’re wearing that?”

His fingers gesture at the silver loop hung in his son’s ear.

“Yes,” Newt sneers, open and unapologetic, reaching up to grasp it.

Whether considering the ongoing battle unworthy for today, or preserving the energy for later, he steps away, dodging past Newt’s shoulder to clamp a hand around Theseus’ elbow. 

The younger brother busies himself with shoving ragged blue jeans and a faded t-shirt into his bag, flinging a borrowed comb back to Theseus’ side of the vanity, amongst cologne and toothpaste and hair gel, pointedly ignoring their whispers about who’d brought flowers and the schedule of the service. 

The sky outside is grey and stirring with threat of shower, and Newt wishes it would. Give an excuse to end this great promenade that has been arranged in her honor. In the honor of a woman who, at this hour, would’ve insisted on tea and company and _have you heard back from that university yet, my Newt?_

Unfamiliar faces blur as they pass and hiss their apologies and _she was a lovely woman_ and _oh but you’re so young to lose her_. He shakes their hands numbly, for the first time thankful to be tucked behind Theseus’ sharp, sturdy shoulder.

_She_ does not come.

He waits outside, scuffs his boot along the cobbled walkway, even until Theseus sticks his blonde head from around the heavy, arched door of the sanctuary, tuts, and gives a jerk of his chin.

His father glares, tips of his ears red as Newt has never seen when he sits beside them at the first pew, the pipe organ already grating sardonic and slow under the stone walls.

She does not come.

He carries the weight of the polished coffin with his father, his brother, three other pairs of unfamiliar hands, and his knees tremble.

Vainly, he searches for her, one last glance over the faceless crowd. Then he seizes the handkerchief Theseus tugs from his own breast pocket and allows the relief of tears to stream on, slow and steady. For who exactly, or for what, he is not sure.

The wake is busy and loud and crowded with more people than he’d accounted for at the church. He nicks a few apple slices from a tray and retreats to the stables. 

His face is buried against the neck of a stallion, tears and rough fur against his cheeks when Theseus finds him.

“What in hell are you doing out here?” he charges, and Newt’s spine snaps taut.

He regards him for a moment, coiling for action until he seethes, “Getting out of _there_ ,” and unashamedly runs the back of his hand over his cheeks.

“Father sent me out here for you.” The afternoon sun has conquered the rain, and sets Theseus’ blonde curls into ethereal relief at the archway.

“Father can go to hell,” he says easily, sniffling and reaching for a pail of oats.

The weight is knocked from his hand and spills along the matted hay on the ground. A hand knocks against his shoulder, rough and hard.

“What is _wrong_ with you?” Theseus demands, giving another shove with the full force of his weight. “Why are you acting this way?”

He can’t respond, just blinks helplessly, owlishly in his direction, trying for any emotion that comes first. He fights for something that doesn’t look like desperation. 

“We lost our mother, Newton!” Theseus bellows.

“While pretending it wasn’t happening!” Newt contends from where he sags against an empty stall. “We lost her while we tried to distract ourselves by ignoring it.”

“Then who do you have right to be upset with--?” Theseus begins but Newt is, for the first time, louder.

“Father has said ten words to me since I arrived. Glaring at me like he can’t stand me, hanging on me about this and that. As always. We haven’t even _talked_ about what happened. He had his secretary call to tell me. And if I hadn’t been sequestered to that damned school, I would’ve…”

“Have you ever thought that he _can’t_?” Theseus interjects. “That he can’t look you in the eye and keep seeing _her_? That he can’t face you, knowing you’re just as fragile as he is? I’ve got to be the stable one all the time for everyone’s sake.”

Newt glares. “Heavy is the head that wears the crown,” he spits.

Theseus does not back down at this. “Tell me honestly. Are you just upset your little girlfriend didn’t show? Are you _surprised_?”

He grimaces, turning his face away from the insult.

“Would you stop pretending like she's the only one that loved you? Like you’re the only one who loved her? It’s insulting, to you and everyone else.” 

Newt springs, launching himself away from the gate and landing a fist at Theseus’ jaw, swinging blindly until they trip and clamour into the dirt.

He has the upper hand for two solid punches until Theseus flips them, and blood spurts colorfully from Newt’s nose.

He tries to heft him off, grasping a handful of blonde hair and yanking, shoving. Theseus grips his wrinkled, dusty shirt front and gives him a shake, pounding and pressing him hard into the ground with his full weight, digging his elbow at his ribs. They grapple for several more moments, energy drained in feeble blows and darting knees until another set of hands fly between them, driving them apart. They roll away from one another, panting and dazed and bloody in the dirt.

“What is God’s name?” their father bellows. “Get inside, go and clean up, the both of you!”

Newt stands first, snapping to his feet like a jungle cat, fists clenched while Theseus folds slowly to his feet. 

He spits his mouthful of blood into the grass beside his father’s tar-colored shoes and walks on, back into the house and past their blinking, awestruck guests and up the stairs.

He washes his face in the sink, watches the diluted pink swirl away. He curls into the bed in his childhood bedroom, shoes and all, and lies there stiff until exhaustion, dishonor and shame, and the sharp hook of anger at feeling it at all, claim him.

He wakes at dark, mind whitewashed and foggy, slumps himself upright to scrub at his face and then toes his way out to the garden. 

He sits upon the stone wall surrounding the moonlit blanket of marigolds and mums and ancestral rosebushes which have been tenderly cared for by practiced hands. Now he wonders to what waste they will come to.

It has been a day of unfeeling. Of stoniness summoned to pass through it all. Never thinking too long on one thing, but here, finally alone and unencumbered, he can’t summon anything of consciousness. 

But outside, and close to a part of _her_ , his mind breathes. And that, perhaps, is all that is necessary now.

Boots crunch in gravel and he glances up at his brother’s angled figure hitching over the wall to settle beside him, two beer bottles clutched in one broad hand.

He holds one to him, giving a gruff ‘here’ before taking a swing from his own.

Newt clutches it in one weak fist, staring down at the glint the moonlight makes on the brown glass.

“It isn’t a peace offering, if you’re that proud,” Theseus says. 

But he makes no move to take his first drink, instead balancing it at his knee and gazing back up over the expanse of the garden.

“I’m _sorry_ ,” he says flatly after a few beats, blinking and pressing the heavy heel of his hand to the moisture that prickles at his eyes.

“Apologies are for children,” Theseus balms, but Newt shakes his head.

“That isn’t what I meant. I’m _sorry_ that I…thought…that I expected some...”

He exhales jaggedly, struggling at the mass of tangled thoughts seething to life like raw nerves. “I don’t know what hurts more…” His throat works thickly. “Mum or Leta.”

“Oh. That. Well, if you’d like my opinion, and you don’t, I know that...I do hope this will be the end of whatever that was, you and her. She was too hard for you.”

Tears successfully at bay, Newt sighs. “I know.”

Silence falls, stretches long and comfortable but for the slosh of beer in bottles.

“How’s your nose?” Theseus asks and Newt pats it gingerly.

“Not broken. This time.”

Theseus clucks rather proudly, and sets a hand to his shoulders, gives a squeeze.

There is silence again, until a memory clutches the new space in his mind.

“Mother told me something once a long time ago, out here when we were planting for the spring. About how all living things need help to grow. And each one of them come with a different set of rules.”

Theseus gives a thin laugh. “Perceptive, she was. I’m glad she passed that trait onto you. That way one of us will make some use of it.”

Newt considers this without flattery, drawing the beer bottle to his lips. 

He has never thought that he and his brother might complement each other, might be--as the saying went--two sides of the same coin. He has never considered that they posses both the best and worst of their parents, in equal and opposite amounts. He had never considered that perhaps pain was worth something, in the end, and that it was a necessary evil not to be shied from and butted against but peacefully embraced in its own right.

The sky crawls lighter, duskier, and the men make their way back over the wall, past the silent stables and up creaking stairs to their respective bedrooms. And while he does not find sleep again until daylight, and his heart doesn’t not feel any more comforted than it had been the day prior, Newt hopes at something to glean, even from this. He welcomes the possibility, when it may come, in its own time.

**Author's Note:**

> [@allscissorsallpaper](http://allscissorsallpaper.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


End file.
